Marco Rubio has been playing the long game as a presidential candidate — not getting into fights, not trying to shove himself into the daily news stories, just sticking to his themes and strengths.

If his strategy is sound — and we won’t know until votes start getting cast — Wednesday night’s CNBC debate will mark the moment it began paying off big time. And if he ends up the nominee, it will be the moment people will say he made his move from the outside.

It wouldn’t be right to say that Rubio totally dominated — both Ted Cruz and Chris Christie made real splashes, too — but he put on quite a show.

His extraordinary preparation and message discipline showed, as did his understanding of the Republican voting coalition. Over the past few days he has been hammered by the Florida press in particular for missing Senate votes, and he knew he would get questioned on it — and when he was, in a tone of naked hostility by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, he pounced.

He pointed out that the Florida newspaper that had called for his resignation said nothing about previous Democratic senators in the state who had missed more votes than he while running for other offices. He called the attack “evidence of the bias that exists in American media today” in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone that immediately drew Republicans to his side.

And then came the evening’s great coup. Jeb Bush, his Florida frenemy, decided to jump in on CNBC’s side to complain that as a constituent he didn’t think he was getting his money’s worth from Sen. Rubio.

Rubio quickly reminded viewers Bush had supported Sen. John McCain and added, “I don’t remember you ever complaining about John McCain’s voting record.” Rubio added sadly: “The only reason you’re doing it is that we’re running for the same position and someone has convinced you that attacking me will help you.”

It was gasp-inducing without being nasty or even all that confrontational. And if Bush, who has fallen into the low single digits in the polls, is teetering on the edge, Rubio’s meticulous counterstrike may have been the blow that does Bush in.

Rubio’s meticulous counterstrike may have been the blow that does Bush in.

Bush seemed shaken by it; he had little energy in the answers he gave afterward and said nothing memorable or even interesting. If Bush had been paying attention, he might have noticed that the way to get his mojo back would have been to attack the snide and inappropriate manner of CNBC’s three chief panelists.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz did it in his shining moment, when John Harwood demanded he explain why on earth he might dare oppose the current budget deal if he claimed to be a “problem-solver.”

Cruz hit back in the same sweet spot Rubio had found: “The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues?”

Later, both Ben Carson and Chris Christie followed suit as well, and fluently, but none of them had a line better than the one Rubio managed to slip in after a rather lame Donald Trump attack on the funding entities known as super-PACs: “The Democrats have the ultimate super-PAC: it’s called the mainstream media.”

And then he took that line and spun it around with a red-meat answer that surely thrilled Republicans nationwide.

“Last week Hilary Clinton went before a committee,” he said. “She admitted she had sent e-mails to her family saying ‘hey, this attack in Benghazi was caused by al-Qaeda-like elements.’ She spent over a week telling the families of those victims and the American people that it was because of a video. And yet, the mainstream media is going around saying it was the greatest week in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was the week she got exposed as a liar . . . but she has her super-PAC helping her out — the American mainstream media.”

Rubio might not be the Republican nominee. But last night he gave it all he’s got, and what he’s got is pretty remarkable.